


Temerity

by GTRWTW



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith, Strike (TV 2017)
Genre: Charlotte POV, Gen, POV First Person, back story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:15:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27140282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GTRWTW/pseuds/GTRWTW
Summary: Charlotte's back story. While I think Cormoran is well rid of her, I do feel for Charlotte, and I wanted to give her a chance to explain herself a bit.Trigger warning: mention of suicide/self harm (not graphic)
Relationships: Charlotte Campbell Ross/Jago Ross
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Temerity

Some years ago, my mother sat me down and explained to me that one day, I would marry the son of a family friend. He was named Arthur and he had a title coming to him: maybe a viscount, or a baron. I didn't pay much attention. My mother told me that because of this, certain things were expected of me: I would become a refined lady; I would learn and maintain excellent etiquette; I would represent the family, always, to the highest standards. I would henceforth not be seen associating with anyone untitled. I would speak properly, as the tutor taught me, and I would remember my place. If I didn't do these things, my mother told me, I would prove that she was right after all to have wanted to get rid of me, and she would have to make do with shipping me off to boarding school in Switzerland.

I was six years old. I didn't know anything about Switzerland and I didn't understand that to attend Le Rosey or Aiglon would be an enormous privilege of the kind unheard of by my commoner friends; all I understood was that my haughty mother was telling me that I had to abandon those friends or she would send me away to live in the mountains, and it seemed to me that she would probably do it regardless of what I did, given that she hadn't ever wanted me anyway. 

I was brought up by a team of nannies; they worked in shifts around the clock, so that I was never alone. I insisted on the night nanny sleeping on a mattress by my side in the nursery. I wouldn't permit a guest bed to be brought in. My mother joked in my presence that it was because I was cruel and liked to keep them uncomfortable, but that wasn't the reason. If they were on a bed, they were raised too high and I couldn't see them. On a mattress, they were lower than me, and even if they turned away from me I could still see their faces when I woke in the night.

Although I valued their presence, and I certainly had my favourites over the years, I have to admit that I treated them like exactly what they were: my staff. I ordered them to bring me things, to tidy my rooms, to read to me. I was haughty and cold; I'd learned from the best. The ones who stayed the longest found ways to manage me; they might raise their eyebrows to make me say please, or they might sigh and take their time until I asked again with more courtesy. But mostly, they did as I asked or I had them fired. I had learned that my mother would have done almost anything to avoid having to deal with me, and if she refused to give in to my demands she would hear from me a lot more. So she fired anyone at my request.

***

By the time I was sixteen, I had honed my gift for persuasion to an exacting degree. Some would have called it manipulation, but I'm kinder, these days, to my younger self. I had learned how to get what I wanted and I had never been shown a different way. I saw no reason to change my behaviour when my methods were so successful. I had no need for friends. I'd been dissuaded from seeking them, and I treated everyone at Cheltenham with the same utilitarian bluntness I had once afforded to nannies who had refused me; if they were of no use to me, I dismissed them.

However, by then I'd been experimenting for several years. The staff were accustomed to seeing my forearms covered even in summer, and the maids had started to bring latex gloves and polythene bags when they cleaned my bathroom, subject as they were to random swab tests. I was careless; I would be routinely found prone on the lawn, having overestimated the perfect dose of percodan, or made some other mistake. The first time, my mother personally oversaw the porters bringing me inside on a makeshift stretcher fashioned from an occasional table. She lingered in the doorway while the nurse set up a blood pressure monitor, wrapping it around my arm and clamping my finger, and I watched her the whole time, but she left as my mouth formed the first consonant. Despite the steady escalation of each subsequent incident, she never entered my room again.

At eighteen, I started at Oxford, desperately unhappy. I'd started to realise that my life was a mockery of what it should have been. I should have been living a glittering high-society life, the kind of life I saw in the magazines and movies with which I occupied my spare time. I knew that Arthur was waiting in the wings, with the vague promise of an elaborate wedding and exotic honeymoon, but I dreaded marriage with every pore of my being. I saw it as nothing more than an extension of the enclave I had so far lived in, and I did everything I could to avoid all discussion of the subject.

I wanted dinners and theatre trips. I wanted to fall out of nightclubs clutching a friend's arm, laughing so hard we were bent over at the waist, aching; I'd seen a photograph in Hello. I wanted to hold someone's hand. I wanted, more than anything, a connection with someone who might love me.

They were difficult for me, those first months at Oxford. You might imagine that I'd have no trouble fitting in, with my cultured upbringing and my refined manners, but the truth is that those things don't mean much without any character behind them, and I had no character at all. I was attempting to forge friendships with people I had been taught to despise; I had to overcome eighteen years of prejudice in order to even speak to them. I still wanted champagne and diamonds; I had been accustomed to a certain lifestyle and I certainly wasn't going to give that up. But, over time, I tentatively developed a circle of friends who were more Chablis and rubies. I never failed to see it as a compromise, but it was one I was willing to make.

***

I met Jago Ross on a Sunday afternoon in May, shortly after returning from a long weekend in Rimini. Ostensibly a sightseeing trip, it had instead seen two friends and I spending three days drinking grappa and smoking in street cafés; I was therefore returning to my rooms wearing oversized RayBans and a general air of dejection. He crossed me as I passed the front desk, and stopped right in front of me. I knew of him, of course - our families had been acquainted - but I had never seen him in the flesh, and I scrutinised him now with a practised eye. Tall and traditionally handsome, he had a casual confidence that I, being familiar with the need to pretend in social situations, was fairly sure was manufactured. It endeared me to him more than his floppy haircut or his Armani jeans. I was no stranger to male attention, and it made a pleasant change to encounter a man who seemed at ease, as opposed to the furtive glances and hesitant propositions I usually endured.

I was speaking to the concierge, asking for any mail for room sixteen, when Jago leant forward over the desk and interrupted me.

"Say, have you been to the Ashmolean? I heard it's rough, you look like you could protect me," he said.

I noted the joke. It was absurd that the rooftop restaurant at the Ashmolean could be considered rough, but he was trying to grab my attention. It worked; I think I mentioned that I was still keen to maintain my high-end lifestyle. "Sure I'll protect you, from the liar you heard that from," I answered. 

He smiled, a broad smirk that told me I had passed his little test. "Sounds good." He pulled a card out of his back pocket and slid it over to me. Shiny and a little amateurish, I could see that it displayed his name and a couple of contact numbers, and I wondered how many girls a student had to have on the go to need contact cards. A little bemused, but admittedly intrigued, I leaned over and stole a pen from the desk. I flipped the card over, wrote my number on the dull side, and handed it straight back to him. I turned my back on his laughter and left him standing there.

***

It took all of three months for my parents to alter my life's plan to involve my marriage to Jago Ross. Reasoning that I'd cause less trouble if I could marry someone of my choosing, and acknowledging that Jago was suitably titled, they carefully ingratiated themselves with the inhabitants of the Castle of Croy. I later heard that they had let down Arthur's parents, their friends, in the most courteous way they knew how: they gave details about my most recent hospitalisation and asserted that I was probably more trouble than I was worth.

Meanwhile, Jago was indeed taking me on the dinners and theatre trips I had wanted. However, I'd come to realise that I had been right to think that his casual confidence had been an act. But I had misread him spectacularly: it wasn't the confidence that was fake, but the casualness. He was phenomenally arrogant and utterly convinced that he was a breed apart from most people. He laughed at the misfortunes of others, made crass jokes about the poor, and sneered at charity. It's easy to see why my mother liked him. 

I was experiencing the slow but furious building up of something I've since recognised as desperation, and which has culminated, a few times in my life, in makeshift stretchers and sterile white bandages. The feeling started to swell every time I spoke to my parents, and every time Jago so much as looked at me. I had hoped that my actions would finally please my parents, but now I found myself trapped between family who would never be entirely satisfied and a boyfriend who considered me his indubitable property. I longed for that hand to hold, that arm to clutch; I no longer cared whether it came from a titled husband or a low-paid nanny. I wanted a comforting face in the night, and I knew that that dream would be extinguished forever when I graduated and my engagement could be arranged. I was hurtling through the weeks as one might run towards the scene of an earthquake in which one's family had been caught: with abject fear and increasing recklessness.

***

Some months later, I found myself in Jago's apartment, dressing for the birthday party of one of his friends. A hasty row had unfurled because Jago had insisted that I wear a scarlet wrap dress that he particularly liked. I could have worn the dress, except that he hadn't asked so much as told me to wear it, and I was stubborn. When I refused, he became significantly more unpleasant; he sneered that I looked cheap in the outfit I had chosen, and the only thing that redeemed me in that regard was that I could walk into parties on his arm. Furious, I silently walked to the wardrobe, selected the dress, and carefully laid it out on the bed. I watched Jago's satisfied expression turn to disgust as I flicked my silver lighter and torched the bed, dress and all.

Nevertheless, we attended the party, both wearing button down shirts and looking for all the world like a young couple in love. Jago had forgiven me for the minor bonfire, mostly because a maintenance team had arrived to check out the smoke, and thus provided a safer outlet for Jago's bullying tendencies. He had spent a smug fifteen minutes berating the blue-collar workers simply for being who they were, and as we emerged into the night he was considerably more cheerful. I hadn't forgiven him for being who he was; I had sincerely started to hate him.

As we reached the apartment block that housed the party, Jago called out to a group approaching from our left. His friends were a rowdy group of teenage boys who already looked like men. We had met on a couple of occasions; they had all propositioned me in one way or another. I found them indescribably boring. They exchanged laddish greetings, slapping each others' backs, and then began passing around a bottle of Patron. I rolled my eyes and told Jago I would meet him inside, and then I was up the stairs before he could object.

***

Walking up the metal staircase in my pointed Blahnik boots, I wondered again what my life was to become. Difficult as I had found it, I had enjoyed university, and I dreaded a return to deference, predictability, and not making my own choices. I realised that if I was going to make the break from it all, it had to be soon; betrothal was coming whether I liked it or not. There would be no dragging my feet or claiming to want a career first; I would never have to work. It's possible that I'm being self-indulgent to say how limiting that feels, but it's true; what would I do all day? Sadly, I knew the answer: shop, and have babies. I didn't thrill at the prospect. 

A feeling of rebellion came over me, and I made an abrupt right, and entered a different party altogether.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
